Theevram, the 2012 Malayalam action thriller film, has landed itself in a dubbing controversy. Director Roopesh Peethambaran has accused producer V S Ismail of dubbing the film without his permission. The producer dismissed his claims saying that no rule demanded that he get his permission for dubbing.
Director Roopesh in an interview with ToI, said that although he didn’t have a problem with the dubbing per se, it was the poor quality of work that riled him. “I got to know that my film had a dubbed version in Tamil only when a friend sent me the link of the trailer. I agree that the producer has the sole dubbing rights, so at first I didn’t create a fuss. But later, on seeing the entire film, I was shocked. They have done such a shoddy job of the dubbing. The song sequences are worse than karaoke,” he said.
The director added that had the producer intimated him about his intentions to dub the film, they could have worked together and created a better product. He said, “I’m not making a complaint but I’m upset that a film I made with such efforts has been ruined in such a manner”. The director intends to add a clause in his future projects which states that producers procure his consent before dubbing.
V C Ismail stood his ground however, and said, “There is no rule which says a director’s permission should be sought for dubbing rights, and producers have been doing it since forever”. The producer also claimed that he had been trying to contact the director since the movie’s release, but the director simply ignored his calls.
Director Roopesh also added that they were debating remaking this movie in Tamil and Kannada. But that’s now out of the question because of the producer’s actions.
Recommended
Theevram is an action thriller starring Dulquer Salmaan, Shikha Nair, Sreenivasan, Vinay Forrt, Vishnu Raghav, Riya Saira and Anu Mohan. According to Imdb, the movie is a story of a missing auto-rickshaw driver and some unidentifiable mutilated body parts found at different places stirring up an investigation that reveals the history of the auto-rickshaw driver and his murderer. The movie had a tepid run at the box office.